The invention relates to a device for testing and sorting out of defective bottles or faulty bottles in a bottle treatment device, for example, consisting of a filling and closing machine with a labelling device switched in series, whereby the bottles to be filled are subjected to a cleaning test before moving into the filling machine and for this purpose are fed to an indexing section and a transfer path associated therewith and to a subsequent sorting section.
Such devices are particularly used when the bottles which are fed from a bottle washing machine to a filling machine must be subjected to a test. This testing is carried out for safety reasons, in particular for detecting lye solution remained in the bottles. For example, the bottles are picked up by an index screw and fed to the required index distance of the test device. After the corresponding index distance has been reached they are fed into a transfer star which is provided with gripper units which grip the bottles, in particular at the opening area and feed the bottles into the range of an optic recognition device. As soon as dirty bottles, or the like, are required, the optic recognition device is effective on a sorting deflector which sorts out the recognized bottles and returns the bottles to the bottle cleaning device.
This very compact device may be disposed directly at the input of a filler machine, so that the operator may also supervise the actual testing device.
However, with such a testing device it is not possible to recognize defective bottles, that is, bottles of a deviating size. These bottles also are fed into the area of the devie and create considerable inteferences due to the different measurements, in particular deviations in height. It is known, to sort out such defective bottles before the input area, that is, the path between the cleaning machine and the filling machine. However, for this purpose an additional operator is required.